Share
20th June 2023
12:33pm BST
Credit: Getty Images[/caption]
He added that during the summer months, we normally have soil moisture reserves that allow crops to grow but due to the recent weather, this is now not the case.
"The crops are designed to work in the temperate climate that we have. They take this long day length with the heat and moisture, and they grow very rapidly," he said.
"If one is missing - if it's very cold or it's very dry - one of the ingredients are missing, so the crops don't grow the way they should.
"What happened this year, during the very wet March and April, we just couldn't plant the crops; the crops are sitting in boxes and seed bags where they shouldn't be.
"Then when the weather stopped raining, the moisture deficit meant that the crops couldn't establish [themselves]".
Hackett has now warned that importing crops from Spain or Britain could be more difficult this year as this this happening across Europe.
"They've had a very difficult time too, much more so [in] structural problems. In Spain, for instance, they use aquifers for their irrigation and that's not available," he added.
"They've labour issues, and they have poor returns from growers too - so there isn't the stuff there in Europe.
"There isn't the stuff from the UK [because] Brexit had a severe impact on our supply chain. The growers in the UK are under severe pressure as well; the number of growers in the UK is collapsing. They had worse weather than we had."
